Articles are so much better than videos a lot of the time. I’ll watch a video for kinetic things, like how to flush my radiator etc.

Its annoying when information is in a video that could easily be written out and skimmed.

Hopefully people will get pissed enough to just use something else.

Yes, they do. :)

They haven’t changed that much. Freenode died and was replaced by libera.chat, but that’s about it. The other big ones are still around.

Is Dalnet even still around? I stopped using IRC way back in the day because they said they were shutting it down and it was really the only server I used.

Libera and IRCnet.

Since when do they ask for age? I remember you didn’t even need a verified email

“Questionable activity” is an easily abused term for power-tripping assholes. Especially with right-wing politics becoming so prevalent world-wide, it’s easy (for example) to imagine a scenario where a group of LGBTQ+ types are targeted for harassment - being forced to choose between losing their safe haven or outing themselves & putting themselves at risk of far worse.

I don’t join any servers. It’s a voice replacement for ventrilo, which I would consider using if I can get a music bot tos tresm music to everyone in the channel.

I don’t socalizetoutside of my group

It’s a program I will only use on a computer when playing videogames. Discord isn’t a social thing for me, but a voice chat for my friends playing videogames.

after they dropped SMS support they all left

Good luck getting them to switch to something else from now on. Signal didn’t shoot themselves in the foot, they cut their leg off.

I’m still incredibly frustrated they did that. I often heard “I’ll just text you” in reply to “I’m leaving snap”. Having an all-in-one app would’ve made that so much easier.

Which is why the laws suck. Don’t fix a stupid law with stupid policy, fix the stupid law.

Then there shouldn’t be such laws. It’s not the government’s job to parent.

I couldn’t imagine an AI model will be very accurate of being able to identify a 11 year old vs a 13 year old. I assume this is more to try and vett whether they can access NSFW channels or not, but honestly since humans can’t properly vett that, I don’t know how an AI is supposed to reliably do that.

Think of it more like Lemmy, do you need to self-host a Lemmy instance to create a post? A community? No, and the same goes for Matrix.

The only reason to self-host Matrix is if you want to. You can create chat rooms on pretty much any server you like.

I personally use Matrix.org so I can just set up a chat room and itll be hosted there. Of course if you want to self host a matrix instance for you and your friends thats an option, or some of your friends can use the self hosted instance and some other instances (Matrix is a federated protocol).

I assume having your own chat room with your friends would mean self hosting?

Why would you assume this? There’s plenty of servers available and conversations can still be encrypted.

Voice chat is extremely lacking, though.

No

The big issue they’ve had, imo, is that there’s too many bots and too many IRC bridges from stubborn oldies who refused to migrate away from IRC.

There was a time when freenode went down that many channels were experiencing an exodus, which would have been the perfect time for Matrix adoption, but people were far too stubborn with IRC despite its many flaws (privacy, lack of history, poor feature set, etc.)

Ugh, you mean I have to take it out?

I will add googly eyes and see if it works

We could also just use pictures of Steve Buscemi, see how long it takes for it to recognize what we’re doing.

A smiley face drawn in MS paint could probably manage.

Holy shit this can actually be a blessing because you can fake an ID as well. Just automate the entire process I am now John Doe and so are all of you.

The feature none of them seem to have is creating a set of rules that users have to read and agree to before seeing the rest of the space, such is the case with Discord Community Channels.

Oh, the service itself is decent, up to great depending on your criteria. Pretty much never down, works well enough, etc.

It’s the privacy and bullshit behind the service that’s hated. Well, usually, some people hate the layout, and others hate the fact that it’s the default for so many people that it’s difficult to avoid.

In addition to other comments, it’s a terrible replacement for forums. Information gets buried quickly, is hard to sort and search through, and conversations get scrambled.

It’s the privacy

it’s a venture capital-backed startup that has been very eager to exit its growth phase and enter its aggressive monetization phase so it can start making its shareholders some money. They’ve already tried a few things that didn’t work, like trying to turn it into a Steam competitor.

The service to date is mostly fine. If you’re like most people who don’t mind exchanging some privacy and control for access to an app that has a nonzero professional UX design budget, it’s pretty fantastic. But the writing has been on the wall for a long time that enshittification is near on the horizon. It’s not a question of if, but how soon.

Matrix or mumble